According to Environment Canada, as reported in today’s Toronto Star, based on current federal, territorial and provincial government policies Canada will miss the target by as much as 270 megatons, 30% below what was promised through the country’s commitment in Paris. The TransMountain Pipeline and the completion of Keystone XL means a continuing commitment to oil sands economics. And other than a published framework and statements about additional future measures, nowhere in Canada’s policies on carbon emission reductions can one find concrete planning other than carbon taxes and cap and trade schemes. In other words letting the market drive emissions downward.
If the rest of the world thinks that the market can lead us to a low-carbon future without making a significant public investment in alternative energy and technologies that can accelerate reductions, then the COP21 agreement will be a fiction.
So what is happening elsewhere?
Since Paris, the nations of the world have met again in 2016 at COP22 in Marrakech, Morocco, for the purpose of beginning to implement the global effort to combat climate change. The event coincided with the U.S. federal election and an anti-climate change regime change in that country. At the time of the meeting, 141 of the 197 countries which had signed on in Paris had ratified the agreement. Since then more have ratified.
Post Marrakech the world’s nations agreed to a COP23 May 2017 meeting in Bonn, Germany. But as of yet, the nations of the world still have to figure out an accurate and consistent way to measure emission amounts among all signatories to the Paris Agreement. Also, still missing, is consistent reporting on national carbon emission reduction progress. When you look at the latest national submissions on carbon reduction, no new reports have been provided to the
When you look at the latest national submissions in the fallout from COP21, no new reports have been submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that post-date 2015. In fact, most are from 2014 or earlier. And to-date only six countries have provided formal documents containing long-term strategies on carbon emission reductions and climate change adaptation and mitigation. We cannot be heartened too much by these six since two of them, the United States and Canada, for very different reasons, are already veering from achieving COP21 commitments. The remainder includes France, Benin, Mexico, and Germany. Benin, a small African country whose emissions per capita amount to 0.34 million metric tons per capita, (the U.S. figure is 19.78) has the capacity and commitment to submit a plan while much of the rest of the world is derelict.
The whole issue of commitment to carbon reductions is further exacerbated by the absence of climate change leadership from the United States. The latest from the new head of that country’s Environmental Protection Agency, an appointed skeptic and a man who in previous roles sued the agency which he now leads, describes carbon dioxide as not the problem. Of course, he is not a scientist.
But other countries are stepping up in the U.S. absence. The European Union, although beset by the Brexit brouhaha, and led by France and Germany, remains committed to carbon emission reductions. The EU, however, is off its reduction schedule in meeting targets set for 2020, 2025 and 2030. The United Kingdom, also, very much committed to an emission reduction strategy with hard dates for ending coal-based energy, is also distracted by formal Brexit negotiations which will start, as of today, right now.
China remains ahead of its scheduled emission reduction targets although the country coming in set very low expectations making it easy to exceed them. India, which appeared to be a reluctant climate change player, in recent weeks has announced pledges to lessen commitments to coal power in favour of renewable and nuclear energy. You can call the EU, UK, China and India commitment, the Merkel, May, Xi and Modi alliance, a much-needed antidote to Trump’s latest executive declaration aimed to kill carbon emission reduction milestones to supposedly, revive coal-belt jobs in states where the new President one the popular vote back in November.
Even Saudi Arabia, the key driver of OPEC and fossil fuel globally, has made a $50 billion clean power investment commitment for the next 6 years to begin reducing the country’s carbon footprint.
And little Fiji in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, plus members of the Asia-Pacific Parliamentary Forum, that includes South Korea and Indonesia, have committed themselves to not just ratify but implement carbon emission reduction policies.
For other global results refer to Results 2017, a publication of the European Climate Action Network, which looks at 58 countries and their activities on climate change since Paris COP21.
A country my wife and I recently visited, (see my posting of February 9), Costa Rica appears to be alone in achieving its 2030 COP21 commitments nine years ahead of schedule. By 2021, the country’s bicentennial, it will be carbon neutral.
The problem is keeping global mean temperatures below a 2 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) rise. The International Energy Agency (IEA) have stated that the only way to achieve this goal requires the capture and storage of almost 4,000 million tons of CO2 annually by 2040. This is 100 times the operational capacity of CCS technology deployed currently including new sites coming on line in 2017.
The summary report calls for “policy parity” for CCS and that it be given priority status both in research and development to ensure the world keeps below the 2 Celsius target. The exact words state, “widespread deployment of CCS will depend on the extent to which governments afford it policy parity – namely, the provision of an equitable level of consideration, recognition and support for CCS alongside other low-carbon technologies.”
So what is policy parity and how can it be achieved?
Policy parity requires government and industry to treat CCS as a major climate change mitigation option and include it in overall GHG reduction strategies. It means giving CCS equal consideration with low-carbon technologies such as renewable energy projects using wind, solar, geothermal and wave. This also means providing incentive mechanisms to stimulate the technology further faster. And it also means governments have to educate the public better so that they understand the implications of not deploying CCS against other mitigation options.
For example, currently there are more than 2,000 coal-fired power plants under construction or in development around the world. These are being built largely in Developing World nations. If CCS were deployed in these projects we could see close to net-zero carbon contributions from them. That would mean countries with access to coal as a fossil fuel source could continue to use it without further impacting global warming.
Another example would be to deploy CCS technology within industrial hubs since non-energy generating industry accounts for 25% (9,000 million tons annually) of global GHG emissions. This kind of cluster approach to CCS is being tried in the Netherlands but it has application on a global scale.
And finally, where utilities are implementing gas-fired power plants to replace coal, CCS could be deployed as well to create near net-zero carbon emissions.
CCS creates flexibility that allows for the continued use of fossil fuels while addressing the pollutants these energy sources produce.
And finally, policy parity, also recognizes that governments today remain conflicted about fossil fuel energy production. Just this week Canada approved two new oil pipelines which means the country intends to increase its oil production volume while still attempting to address carbon emission reductions. And this week BP announced a new major oil and natural gas project in the Gulf of Mexico, producing 280,000 barrels of oil per day and 60 million cubic feet of natural gas. If CCS were integrated into all of these fossil fuel energy decisions with a goal of creating near or net-zero-carbon neutrality then continuing to make such investments would make more sense in light of the climate change challenge we face.
The Current State of CCS
There are currently 38 large-scale CCS projects either in planning, construction or operation around the world. In addition there are hundreds of small pilot projects. Where are these projects? In Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Iceland, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. The 15 largest of these capture close to 30 million tons of CO2 annually. Three additional projects near to ready will contribute an additional 5 million tons. By the end of 2017, four more will come on line increasing the amount by another 5 million tons. The longest operating CCS facility is in Norway, the Sleipner CO2 Storage Project which since inception has sequestered more than 16 million tons of the gas.
What’s Stopping CCS Deployment
There remains concern on the part of the general public about CCS technology. What if the captured gas leaks out, or gets into groundwater? No existing facility has experienced such issues but public concern has been a drag on development and deployment.
In addition opponents of CCS argue that weaning ourselves from all fossil fuels is a better use of our resources and that spending time and money on capturing GHGs means we will continue to live with a polluting energy source.
In the case of the former the public needs to be better educated about every stage of the CCS process and the viability of permanent CO2 sequestration. Sharing Iceland’s experience with sequestration would explain the science.
As for the second it would be a more cogent argument if we didn’t see nations and energy companies around the world continue to make enormous investments in fossil fuel energy extraction and infrastructure.
CCS largely serves one purpose, sequestering CO2. It is also used for enhanced oil recovery and may even be deployed for geothermal energy closed cycle systems. It is a preventive, like taking birth control. And as long as we continue to burn fossil fuels to generate energy, it is the best technology to prevent CO2 from creating an imbalance of the gas in the atmosphere. That cannot be said of any renewable energy technology. At best all they do is displace the use of fossil fuels which may end up being burned in transportation or other endeavours.
What’s Needed to Make CCS Help the World Achieve the Less Than 2 Celsius Upper Limit
The report tabled at Marrakech states that through a dramatic increase in CCS deployment over the next 25 years allowing us to reach a storage capacity of 4,000 million tons of CO2 captured annually by 2040, we can meet the 2 Celsius upper limit. In the infographic below on the left we see where we currently are. On the right we see where we need to get to by 2040.
In the last ten years renewable energy investment has amounted to $2.5 trillion U.S. Of that $1.8 trillion has been spent on wind and solar technologies. This investment has been driven by strong and sustained policy support. And this investment to date has done nothing to stop the growing carbon emissions challenge we face.
A comparison in investment in CCS shows what I have described as the disparity of policy parity. Compare $2.5 trilllion to $20 billion, the amount to date spent on CCS in the same timeframe. The disparity is 120 times less. And the end result has been at best a tiny dent in the total volume of CO2 our modern industrial society produces.
There is no mitigating technology that directly removes CO2 from the atmosphere other than CCS. It is singularly addressing the cause of global warming and yet government and industry fail to see its efficacy.
COP22 in Marrakech preceded and has followed the U.S. election. Its proceedings conclude at the end of this week. For the attendees the victory by Donald Trump changed the dynamic from business as usual to one of renewed purpose to implement negative emission strategies and technologies to speed up global efforts to decarbonize. Trump’s triumph is being viewed as a catalyst for smaller nations to step up and take charge. Overall there appears to be renewed commitment to meet global carbon neutrality by 2050, 34 years from now. The community of nations remains committed to phase out coal-fired power, to attain 70 to 80% of electricity from renewable sources, and to implement carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) eliminating emissions by as much as 16% all by 2030. It is an ambitious plan and the question in many minds now is will we need the United States on board?
For Donald Trump, as a business person, his frame of mind is not oriented to sustainability. His mindset doesn’t focus on global impacts. Because he is not in the energy field he doesn’t have experience looking at the issue of carbon risk and its impact on his business model. But now he has to head up a government with global responsibilities. His country is the world’s largest economy and its second largest carbon emitter. Now he has to look at carbon risk and its impact on relationships with other nations. That means a change in mindset is needed.
The question is can he do it? If he is incapable will his actions stop global progress on carbon emission reductions?
There is a growing consensus that at his best he may suddenly grasp the difference between business and government and begin to address global consequences of ignoring the scientific evidence and the actions of other nations. At worst he may remain a business person who has no concept of global risk. That person can appoint the wrong people in positions of authority. That person can end the United States involvement in global greenhouse gas elimination initiatives, climate mitigation and adaptation. The world’s best hope is that the hiatus of American non-involvement on the climate file will only last four years. Then a new American president can rejoin the world community but at a significant bump up in cost that will probably amount to trillions of dollars.
